介绍:
2021年12月20日 周一 晚8:00——9:00
瓦尔登湖三人行（136）直播实况录制 腾讯会议版
英语文本
Walden [ˈwɔldən] (Issue 138)
11. Higher Laws (6)
[8] Yet, for my part, I was never unusually squeamish; I could sometimes eat a fried rat with a good relish, if it were necessary. I am glad to have drunk water so long, for the same reason that I prefer the natural sky to an opium-eater's heaven. I would fain keep sober always; and there are infinite degrees of drunkenness. I believe that water is the only drink for a wise man; wine is not so noble a liquor; and think of dashing the hopes of a morning with a cup of warm coffee, or of an evening with a dish of tea! Ah[ɑː], how low I fall when I am tempted by them! Even music may be intoxicating. Such apparently slight causes destroyed Greece and Rome, and will destroy England and America. Of all ebriosity[ˌiːbrɪˈɒsɪtɪ], who does not prefer to be intoxicated by the air he breathes? I have found it to be the most serious objection to coarse labors long continued, that they compelled me to eat and drink coarsely also. But to tell the truth, I find myself at present somewhat less particular in these respects. I carry less religion to the table, ask no blessing; not because I am wiser than I was, but, I am obliged to confess, because, however much it is to be regretted, with years I have grown more coarse and indifferent. Perhaps these questions are entertained only in youth, as most believe of poetry. My practice is "nowhere," my opinion is here. Nevertheless I am far from regarding myself as one of those privileged ones to whom the Ved refers when it says, that "he who has true faith in the Omnipresent[ˌɒmnɪˈprezənt] Supreme Being may eat all that exists," that is, is not bound to inquire what is his food, or who prepares it; and even in their case it is to be observed, as a Hindoo commentator has remarked, that the Vedant limits this privilege to "the time of distress[dɪˈstres]."
[9] Who has not sometimes derived an inexpressible satisfaction from his food in which appetite had no share? I have been thrilled to think that I owed a mental perception to the commonly gross sense of taste, that I have been inspired through the palate, that some berries which I had eaten on a hillside had fed my genius. "The soul not being mistress[ˈmɪstrɪs] of herself," says Thseng-tseu, "one looks, and one does not see; one listens, and one does not hear; one eats, and one does not know the savor['seɪvə] of food." He who distinguishes the true savor of his food can never be a glutton[ˈɡlʌtn]; he who does not cannot be otherwise. A puritan may go to his brown-bread crust[krʌst] with as gross an appetite as ever an alderman[ˈɔːldəmən] to his turtle[ˈtɜːtl]. Not that food which entereth into the mouth defileth a man, but the appetite with which it is eaten. It is neither the quality nor the quantity, but the devotion to sensual savors; when that which is eaten is not a viand['vaɪənd] to sustain our animal, or inspire our spiritual life, but food for the worms that possess us. If the hunter has a taste for mud-turtles, muskrats, and other such savage tidbits[ˈtɪdbɪts], the fine lady indulges a taste for jelly made of a calf's foot, or for sardines[ˈsɑːdiːns] from over the sea, and they are even. He goes to the mill-pond, she to her preserve[prɪˈzɜːv]-pot. The wonder is how they, how you and I, can live this slimy[ˈslaɪmɪ], beastly life, eating and drinking.
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